Cultural History and its Neighbours

Cultural History and its NeighboursPeter BurkeabstractThis article offers a kind of map of intellectual fields that are more or lessclose to cultural history. It is difficult to separate cultural history fromintellectual, social and political history, from archaeology and from thehistories of such activities as art, literature, language and religion,whether these histories are studied in departments of history or under theumbrella of “visual studies”, “religious studies” or “cultural studies”. Allthese neighbours form an “inner circle”, discussed in relative detail.Beyond it lies a “middle circle” of disciplines that are separate fromcultural history but have made considerable impact on it: anthropology,ethnology, sociology, politics and geography. Still further away, anddiscovered by cultural historians only recently, comes an “outer circle”,comprising psychology, cognitive studies, neuroscience and biology. Theeffect of the outer circle of disciplines on the practice of cultural historyremains uncertain.